


A Specific Pacific

by JadedTangerine



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Beach fic, Drabble, Fluff, Hulkeye - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadedTangerine/pseuds/JadedTangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not very often Clint and Bruce get time to themselves. They make the most of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Specific Pacific

It’s the kind of afternoon the world is forever trying to capture in travel ads and trashy romance novels. But the sun and the edge of the Pacific Ocean don’t seem to know about airbrushing and cliché’s. Bruce tastes the spice on the other man’s lips, feeling the sting on his tongue. There’s still a orange smudge of sauce on Clint’s jaw he can’t bear himself to banish. Not just yet.

With the clever speed of a man who works with his hands, Clint hooks Bruce’s belt loops and pulls him into the hammock. It rocks precariously, branches shuddering above, threatening to tip them out onto the sand. Clint laughs against his teammate’s throat.

“Steady, Grumpy Bear.”

He arranges his body around Bruce’s less graceful one, bearing the other man’s weight with ease. Clint’s wearing a traumatically floral shirt, insisting he’s on holiday, he’ll wear what he wants. Something loud that sticks out. In the field he’d be painting a target on his own back.

“Please abandon that shirt before we’re attacked by parrots.”

“Gonna make me? “

The hammock stabilises some. Bruce looks down. Arches an eyebrow.

“I just might.”

A calloused hand nudges idly at the collar of Bruce’s own shirt, before twisting a finger through the dark hair underneath. There's no hurry to it, although he can feel their bodies responding, even in the laziness of high noon.

“So what’s on the menu tonight?”

.

Clint loves cooking with Bruce. The other man hadn’t realised it until he’d caught him studying him from across the bench. Clint leant over the counter in sandy boardshorts, a look of concentration on his face, just watching. Bruce continued peeling mushrooms for a moment.

“Something wrong?”

He smiled, shaking some of the sand onto the marble benchtop. “Nah, I just... I don’t really get the whole home-cooked meal experience much, with the job.”

“Come here.”

Bruce doesn’t use endearments, not like Clint does. That’s part of their dialogue. Clint’s all exploring and touches and petnames, and Bruce is secret smiles, sudden passion and little things that don’t seem like much at first. They share weird stories about people they’ve met on the road, and the times their paths might have almost crossed around the world. 

From that afternoon onwards they cook together almost every night. There’s sand in his hair and Bruce tastes the salt and spice. Clint watches the scientist’s hands, big hands, but surprisingly steady. Not graceful per say, but determined and strong. He takes one hand in his own, licking the juice off Bruce’s palm.

The scientist jokes that it takes them twice as long to do anything when they’re together, but his eyes betray the lonely something he can never really feed, lurking behind the humour and the anger.

.

Hawkeye brings his bow and the Hawaiian shirts, a new one every year. He borrows a surfboard and never packs enough good clothes. Bruce brings ratty paperbacks and cotton. He has an old bike sitting around the side of the house, with a rubberband motor that almost seems about to give out but never quite does.

One afternoon Clint convinces Bruce to let the Hulk out. Just for a bit. It takes him three weeks leading up to the trip, before the shy man even agrees to consider it. He never forgets that afternoon, playing in the shallows, low tide creating a natural lagoon. The Hulk is up to his neck in salt water, just watching the schools of fish. Clint sits on Hulk's back, feeling the waves ebb and flow against green skin. He’s secured the perimeter three times over, it’s a private beach and he wants it to remain that way. Clint teaches him to make sandcastles, the Hulk makes three and destroys only the crumbling one. A mercy smashing. There’s a moment, late in the afternoon, where despite himself, he’s almost scared. Almost. He gives the Hulk a shell he finds, a tiny cowrie with chocolate spots. The creature holds it up to the light, rendering it little more than a speck caught between huge green fingers. Clint just stops himself from flinching as the other giant hand closes around his neck, capable of crushing him to pulp in a single motion. And sits stunned in the ruins of a sandcastle as the Hulk plants a sloppy kiss on his forehead and leaves Bruce and Clint to their own devices.

They never talk about it, but he can tell Bruce’s eyes are slightly red when he wakes on the beach, the shell still clutched in his hand. They sleep out on the sand that night, eating burnt sausages over a fire.

.

“Your turn to pick, Big Bird” Bruce smiles up from the couch, looking a little sunburnt.

They both bring recipes with them. Printouts, magazine pages and some handwritten scraps. A few torn from the pages of books, which Clint presents with a sheepish grin, and won’t say where they came from. Natasha slips him a broth recipe written in a spidery script, parts crossed out where she’d forgotten to use English for just a second. Steve hands Bruce a folded up piece of paper for cherry pie, the one Bucky’s mum made for birthdays.

.

Bruce has pasta sauce in his stubble, he doesn’t shave much when its just the two of them. Clint kisses it away, smirking.

“Told you, too much wine,” neither knowing whether they’re talking about the bolognaise or the half empty bottle by the couch. Bruce growls regardless.

.

Clint’s hands slip down the other’s back, stroking skin still sensitive from the sun and sand. There’s heat trapped beneath it, it can feel it under his fingertips. Bruce almost purrs. Those clever hands slide further.

“Kinda wanna fuck you in this hammock, babe.”

Bruce chuckles, not his usual, conversational laugh, but something animal yet genuinely happy. Clint’s chest does something funny that shouldn’t be entirely healthy.

Bruce thinks his lover, and he hates that word, hesitates to use it because it shouldn’t mean much any more, but somehow still does, and hell, he can’t supply a better one, really needs to lose that shirt.

“You’ll break something” he says simply. “I like playing Doctor, but no.”

The archer grins wickedly, licking the salt from his lips. Eyes never leaving those above him as his hands travel down.

“Is that a challenge, Doctor Banner?”

They tip into the sand within a minute, Clint’s still laughing when he takes a knee to the gut, Bruce landing on top of him with a yelp. They’re both going to bruise tomorrow, when they pack their bags and return to civilisation, sunburnt with rattier paperbacks and no Hawaiian shirt.

They huff and wince for a second, as the tree showers them with bark and old leaves. Bruce’s eyes are bright green and Clint can see he’s taken an elbow to the forehead on the fall down. It passes and Clint can’t help but smile again. The doctor punches him half-heartedly, before kissing him fiercely.

“You’re lucky you’re pretty, Barton.”

He slides a button out of the fraying hem of the bright fabric, kissing the skin underneath. Eyes almost that deep, gentle brown again now. Clint grabs him as the hammock fabric falls on top of them, finally giving out after that one last insult. It covers them both, like a raggedy tent, letting in the light through strange patterns that colour their skin. The master assassin finds himself unable to stop smiling at the dishevelled scientist.

“Yeah, guess I’m pretty lucky.”


End file.
